2 Boys with A Whale, 2008, Oil on Canvas, 50×70 cm 

Peeled Land 1, 2008, Oil on Canvas, 60×90 cm 

Peeled Land 2 ,2008, Oil on Canvas, 80×110 cm 

Nachum Gutman Art Museum

Peeled Land

Ami Faytchevitz’s paintings referring to Africa describe an open and bare space, devoid of shelter or protection. A sea of sharks at its beaches, a rupture or split to its length; here and there clouds of smoke and gunpowder rise from it, and it is all pierced as a strainer. Bleeding animals gaze in it and helpless human beings walk in it, hypnotized and fearful in front of the sight. Along with this, the sight is colorful and lively, gloomy and childish, severe and naive, all at once.

Faytchevitz visited Africa ten years ago and returned to it in his paintings of the past year. Its landscapes were immersed within him and reemerged in the context of the refugee camps of Gaza and the hopeless childhood of the children living in it. Faytchevitz’s Africa – a mixture of memory and political insight is “A land peeled from its natural power, an exposed continent that went through genetic mutilation, infected with toxic waste,” so he writes. The toxic is a heap of occidental fantasies of massive consumerism, free market economy, progress and luxury – components that have no root in the African existence and subside in it as a ghost, a shadow, a remainder. Following the penetration of the first world, Africa had lost its natural flow and is trying to pick up the pieces to no avail. Faytchevitz wishes to bring to mind the African continent as a site destined to the tribulations of power and exploitation, dragging with it the glowing colorfulness of a lost childhood.

Tali Tamir, 2009

 Scattering Former Love, 2008, Watercolor on Paper, 137×167cm

 Haifa museum

האסטתיקה של הזוועה/ ורדית גרוס/ ידיעות אחרונות/ 7 ימים/ 2009

תערוכה/ ים המאירי/ שמנת/ פברואר 2009 

Scattering Former Love

Ami Faytchevitz’s exhibition, which is composed of watercolor paintings on paper, was inspired by the world of medical imaging that uses computerized technologies to scan and map out the body. The digital apparatus invading the flesh produces an abstraction of the human body, disassembling and reassembling it as a collection of data that detects defects or ensures proper functioning. These digital images (ranging from ultrasound imaging of fetuses to CT studies of corpses and mummies) accompany people throughout their lives – from the womb to the grave. Faytchevitz is concerned with states in which man experiences his existence and body as a flat image and as a virtual, alienating entity mediated by digital screening. He examines the manner in which the computerized rearrangement of the body deprives it of its materiality, and leads finally to the loss of its human dimension.

As in earlier works, this series is reflective of Faytchevitz’s main choice on the creation and exhibition of watercolor paintings. His attraction to painting in this medium began while he was studying at Bezalel and working part-time as a technical assistant at the Israel Museum. The first exhibition he hung at the museum, “Vision of Light: A Century of Watercolor in Israel” (1998, curator: Meira Perry-Lehmann), exposed him to the richness of this medium. He was captivated by the ethereal, somewhat uncontrollable quality of watercolor painting and by its unraveled, “unofficial character” – since watercolors are often used to create sketches for oil paintings, and may combine both linear and painterly qualities.

In contrast to the first generations of Israeli watercolorists, who for the most part created representations of pastoral landscapes, Faytchevitz’s gaze is directed at human nature. The power of his works is born of the tension created between the delicate, light-hued, transparent watercolors and the dark themes with which he charges them. For the most part, his paintings focus on passionate scenes involving force, violence and explicit sexuality inspired by currents events, kabbalistic myths, Japanese pornography and more.

The earlier bodies of work created by Faytchevitz were already concerned with the loss of human qualities. The human figures in these works resembled mechanical dolls or marionettes, and alluded to the kabbalistic myth of the golem (the exhibition “The Golem,” 2001) or to cloning (the exhibition “Hidden Plan,” 2003). These images, which were concerned with the reproduction of human beings by technological means and with the loss of the human origin, were created as copies whose relation to the original is analogous; by contrast, the digitized medical images that Faytchevitz relates to in his current body of work exist at a further removal from the origin, shaping a subjective experience of complete alienation and estrangement from the human body.

Faytchevitz began working on this group of works by creating paintings of  skulls and fetuses in which medical imaging serves as the primary aesthetic reference. These body parts hover upon the white page; their outlines are colored a transparent gray, and they are decorated with colorful dots that seem to allude to the “mapping” of the “scanned” body part. Since these colorful arrangements are not subordinated to functional, scientific demands, and since their distribution appears arbitrary, they are transformed into dysfunctional ornaments characterized by excess, like jewelry adorning a series of ghosts.

As this series evolved, Faytchevitz turned to examine more specific ghosts, some of which are autobiographical. He began to apply the aesthetics of digital imaging to various portraits, including self-portraits, and to narrative scenes – while enlarging the format of these works. It seems that the figures in the series have internalized the estranged digital subjectivity that has been violently imposed upon them. A poignant example of this is the work Double Fuck (2008), which features a pornographic image of anal sex. The man portrayed filming the act of penetration with a video camera seems incapable of experiencing this sexual situation without amplifying it through the mediation of an external means of representation, or enlarging it by means of an artificial closeup. This powerful image presents a state of dulled sensory experience, an inability to perceive reality without raising the stimulus threshold and level of violence; the result is a loss of the authentic possibility of experiencing intimacy, empathy or even pain.

            Nevertheless, it seems that Faytchevitz’s works do not simply point to subjective experiences of estrangement and alienation in an exposed, crude manner; rather, their very essence opposes itself to such experiences. The manual reappropriation of these digital images, whose high-tech quality is captured in the low-tech medium of watercolors, allows for a small moment of grace: imbued with compassion, the unsteady manual gestures of the painters’ hand are still able to emblematize the human spirit.

Tal Yahas, 2008

Untitled, 2007, Watercolor on Paper, 35×50

אקלקטוס

תערוכת היחיד אקלקטוס של עמנואל פייצ’ביץ’ מציגה מפגש אקזוטי של הטבע מול העיר, זיווג פנטזמי של חלחול האורבאני לתוך החי והולדתה של פאונה חדשה. רוח תל אביבית של פיח, מיניות, אלימות וצבע כמו חדרה לציפורים, קעקעה עצמה לתוכן ויצרה קרנבל של דימויים. גן עדן מול גיהינום, חלום מול סיוט, עולם חושי, הזוי ויצרי שטומן בחובו שרשרת של אינספור גילויים. 

פייצ’ביץ’ יוצא לראשונה מהפורמט הקטן, האינטימי לעבר עבודות גדולות, הבנויות מחיבור של יחידות שונות ודורשות הן מבט פנורמי והן התקרבות פנימה. העבודות מצריכות זמן והשהייה, ובדומה למדיטציה, באמצעות התבוננות עמוקה, נחשף הנרטיב ונפרש בהדרגה.

הציורים מלאים בצבעים המתמוססים זה בזה ובשלל דימויים השזורים אחד בשני. כל דימוי מכיל בתוכו חיים אחרים, כמו גוף בתוך גוף מתגלים הפנימיות האבסורדית, שקיפות מול אינטנסיביות, חומריות מול משיחה עדינה וערבוב של ארוטיקה, מיניות ודמיון. העבודות מזכירות במידת מה את עושר החיות והיצורים המומצאים של הירונימוס בוש אלא שכאן הציפורים מבודדות לרוב מהקשר ונראה כי הן מתמלאות מעצמן תוך כדי אותה המתנה מנוטרלת הסופגת לתוכה את מראות העיר.

איריס מנדל 2007

The Tigers, 2004, Watercolor on Paper, 57×50 cm

New Staff  

In his previous show at the gallery (Golem, 2001), Faytchevitz exhibited works in various media. Now, more than two years later, his show consist purely on water-color on paper paintings; “painted objects” as he puts it, since both the bedding and the frame are made from the same material (paper), therefore functioning as one unit. This element, along with others, creates holistic quality that characterizes each of the works, as well as the whole of them. Nevertheless, this coherent quality of the show is being cut off time and time again in the non-formalistic plane of things.

Faytchevitz, for example, is not interested in using water-color in a traditional manner – as a spot on paper – he rather use its softening quality as a tool to refine the very strong images that are placed on the paper.

“In my previous water-color works” said the artist, “I could have used different type of colors. This time, the material has a great importance, it is irreplaceable because of the complex and dualistic relationship it has with the bedding – the paper; it is as absorbed in it as it maintains a quality of alienation from it.

 

This double movement of both attraction and rejection appears in the thematic-aesthetic layer as well, Since the paintings are not from the sort that makes you love them from first site and without any traces – they challenge the spectator, frustrating him from time to time, but mostly capture his or her gaze and attention thanks to their strong and intensive character.

 

“What ever it is that I am doing, it’s not more than playing with that which surrounds me, my immediate Environment. That is all I have to say to the world and about the world“. Faytchevitz’s attitude toward the medium, the ease and and exuberance of his approach to the medium, his excellent technique, the expressiveness and vividness of the works, all these and others place him in the center of young Israeli art doing, granting him a brilliant interesting artistic present and future.

 

 

 

 

 

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Hidden Plan, 2002, Computer Print, 120×800 cm

A Pack of Lone Wolves by Efrat Mishori

 At first glance, the spectator feels that he has been afforded a bird’s eye view of a central square, in which a military procession is taking place: thousands of tiny figures are marching, forming shapes such as circles, lines, and Stars of David. What distinguishes their movement is their entrance and exit from a structure, in a way that is reminiscent of drilling exercises. But almost immediately, after one begins to disregard the masses and pay attention to detail, the impression of this military spectacle begins to crumble: what looked like a preened bush or the base of a gate turns into a feces-like pile of heads; what looked like the functional forming of a circle emerges as the thronging of a crowd around decapitated heads; and what seemed at first a purposeful march towards a finishing line is finally revealed to be a massive surging towards an anal act.

Indeed, the arena that we are observing is far from being a real marching square, and the human movement within it cannot finally be interpreted according to a clear and inert code. There is nowhere to go, and there is nowhere to come back from: the elongated plain that we are privy to is the output of computer graphics, and the people depicted on it are not real, but the test-tube kids of Photoshop, which were created from pasting the artist’s head on the body of the Golem. 

The computer has allowed Faytchevitz to formulate a schematic, digital reproductive system. From the moment he created the first human atom for the software and began to let the prototype loose in the dead and flickering terrain of the computer, he discovered the possibility of creating an entire world of I’s in infinite constellations, alignments, forms and groupings. Along the length of eight meters, which serve as no more than an arbitrary margin, one experiences the echoing of almost all the mass events which cause people to band together and operate as a collective: from the gathering of curious crowds in street performances and in packed lines near football stadiums, through cannibalistic magic ceremonies practiced by obscure tribes, military processions and folk dancing in public squares, to horrifying occurrences such as the holocaust and genocide.

Within that collective, impersonal, massively populated domain, which operates according to rigorous deterministic laws, it is entirely clear that this creature – half Golem and half Faytchevitz – is trying to survive as an individual. While accepting the developmental laws of the computer application, while letting it reproduce in its own language, while showing it how it thinks itself, the aforementioned individual – i.e. the artist – tries to mount obstacles in the computer’s way and attain the impossible; the artist attempts to extricate himself from the endless web of drilling exercises, and find within the dead medium a spark of independent life.

In essence, Faytchevitz mounts a duel with himself within the digital realm: he doubles and triples his brain mass, turns around and moves from himself to himself, subverts himself and attempts to ceaselessly upgrade the scope of his bodily abilities by adding on organs and creating mutations. The motivation, of course, is not to reach some sort of unqualified resolution or redemption. Faytchevitz is not naïve. He does not offer revelation or enlightenment through his acts, not for himself nor for us. The endless wandering about in the maze is in itself the goal. The trap is part of the way out. Just like an astronaut who has lost his connection with ground control, Faytchevitz willingly relegates himself to a Sisyphean, never-ending hovering within the realm of digital space. 

 Untitled, 2001, Collage on Paper, A4   

גולם גולם אבל ממזר

הדפסות מחשב מטופלות , צבעי מיים , חיתוכים , הדבקות , נייר.

עמי פייצ’ביץ מארגן, מהנדס, הוא ממיר מסה עצומה למשקל של זבוב, אקספרסיביות טעונה

ומלאת פאתוס, מתנגשת חזיתית בפורמט קל, לחששני, פלרטטני.

הגולם, המיתוס הקבליסטי על כל גלגוליו מתפקד כמטאפורה מרכזית בתערוכה,הגולם נברא על ידי מילים אך הוא אינו יודע לדבר, הוא מקבל פקודות, הוא מבין אותן, הוא אמור לשרת מטרה או אולי צורך קמאי.

בדרך לא דרך הוא מכיר באוזלת ידו, במוגבלותו, הוא מצמיח תודעה ביקורתית, ואז, אז מתחילה הטרגדיה .

זה לא היה אמור לקרות.

יוצרו של הגולם המנסה לחקות מהלך אלוהי נכשל במשימתו, הוא אינו שולט בחוקיות הבריאה ולא יכול לחזות  את תוצאותיה. על חטא היוהרה הלא הוא ההיבריס המפורסם  משלמים מחיר, מחיר כבד. כבד כמו מגדלי התאומים.

הדימויים בתערוכה נלקחו (בחלקם) מסרט גרמני אקספרסיוניסטי משנת 1920, הפיגורציה,

האסתטיקה, טיפוסיות לז’אנר, המיתוס היהודי עטוף באריזה מוקצנת , קלישאתית ומניפולטיבית.

ועמי? עמי לוקח את מה שהוא צריך .

מתוך הצע אין סופי של דימויים הוא בורר בקפידה את המדויקים עבורו.

הוא מבצע הליך כירוגי ,והתפרים גסים, גסים כמו התפרים של פרנקלשטיין, גסים מרב כנות.

הוא לא מעגל בפינות ,לא משתדל לדבר יפה ,לחפש מילים נרדפות,לחרוז חרוזים.

זה מה שזה. ככה.

הגולם מתקיים בתוך סביבה. בתוך סביבה מפוברקת.מבטו אינו אימפוטנטי. עכשיו הוא נמצא בשלב מתקדם. הוא פועל בדרכים נסתרות שאינן מתפענחות בקלות.

יום אחד הוא יצליח להזיז אנשים כמו ג’דאי מיומן,רק על ידי מבט צלול ומרוכז.

הוא פגום, אין ספק, הוא בן לא חוקי, הוא מהלך שגוי, אבל יום אחד הוא גם ילמד לדבר,בשפתו,בשפתם של גלמים משוכפלים.

ואז? השד יודע מה יקרה.

אפרת ניר 2001